Australia can no longer lay claim to the origins of the iconic New Zealand kiwi following new research showing the kiwi’s closest relative is not the emu as was previously thought. Instead, the diminutive kiwi is most closely related to the extinct Madagascan elephant bird — a 2-3 meter tall, 275 kg giant. And surprisingly, the study concluded, both of these flightless birds once flew.

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“This result was about as unexpected as you could get,” says Mr Kieren Mitchell, PhD candidate with ACAD, who performed the work. “New Zealand and Madagascar were only ever distantly physically joined via Antarctica and Australia, so this result shows the ratites must have dispersed around the world by flight.”

With more of this sort of data becoming available, surely it is time to re-write the iconic Darwinian tree of life using genetic information rather than relying on pre-genetic physical similarities.